Frequently, small product items, and in particular pharmaceuticals such as pills, tablets, capsule, nutriceuticles (vitamins) and lozenges are packaged in blister packs where each pocket of the package holds a single pill. For ease of reference, any of the above and other small items or objects that may be required to be singulated will be referred to, collectively and generically, as “pills.” Blister packs are made by forming a thermoplastic strip formed as an array of upwardly open pockets. A filling machine then puts a single pill into each pocket and a backing to the array of pockets is provided thereby sealing each pill in a pocket separate and apart from other pills within the pack.
In order to make sure that each blister package is marketable, each of the blister pack pockets must contain a single pill or the package is marked as a reject and culled from the product line. The field of pill-dispensing features many different mechanisms that are designed to recognize, sort and count tablets and capsules of all types and sizes. Many of these devices are unreliable for two basic reasons. Either they fail to singulate pills appropriately and multiple pills are placed into a single blister pack pocket or they fail to get a pill into the blister pack, leaving the entire pack one pill or more short. Such a failure is expensive when the product itself is expensive or difficult to dispose of, as is the case with many pharmaceuticals. The problem associated with separating pills from each other for individual packaging, or singulation, is exacerbated by the wide variety of different sizes, shapes and weights of different types of pharmaceuticals.
In order for one apparatus to properly recognize and singulate differently-sized pills, for instance, it has often been necessary to modify the design of the dispenser machine so as to accommodate pills of particular shapes and sizes. Additionally, frequent adjustments must be made to a dispenser machine during the operation thereof. Such changes greatly inhibit the use of such devices in facilities that are automated or are continuously run.